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Sunday
November 4

Toward A Common Hope

By Marsh Chapel

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And Ruth said, “Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”

We listen again for the windchimes of hope, whispering and singing to us, beckoning us into and out from an unseen future. The chimes ring today in Scripture, Tradition, Experience, and Reason.

Scripture: Gospel

The passages we have read, during worship this fall, in the Gospel of Mark, our earliest gospel, show us in living color what sorts of things were on the minds of early Christians, say in Rome, say in 70ad, say among mostly gentile people.

There is Jesus’ prophetic affirmation of a higher law, of a more empathetic view of women within divorce, along with a command to protect them. In response to a direct question, he thinks the question through. Intellect.

There is the celebration, welcome and embrace of children, as measures and exemplars of the faithful life. They have not yet had their spontaneity squelched, nor their emotion demoted, nor their sensuality sabotaged. They have an infant, primordial freedom, toward which it could be the rest of us might well lean. Spontaneity.

There is the warning, the stark recognition of the pervasive omnipotence of wealth. A camel might go through the eye of a needle before a rich man might go into heaven. A certain amount of wealth, to support one’s living and work and love makes sense. More than that harms and hurts, because it corrupts the gift of freedom. Emotion.

There is the ever present need of the ill, the sick, the blind. One is made well, made whole–blinded he sees. Her Mark is about baptism, about seeing a way into a new life, as the language (Son of David), the garment discarded (his tunic), the cry (Lord, KYRIE, which in Matthew becomes KYRIE ELEISON), the eyes opened (the miracle of faith)—all tell us. Bartimaeus is you and me, an example of a new disciple. Sensuality.

And today, as if to sum up, our passage hears Jesus, again to answer a religious question, bringing focus to the commandments: love God, and love neighbor.

We know not who wrote Mark, only his name. He wrote for a particular community, whose location and name are also unknown. He even mentions by name members of his church, Alexander and Rufus (15:21). The book is meant to help a community of Christians. It is written to support and encourage people who already have been embraced by faith. While it purports to report on events long ago, in the ministry of Jesus, its main thrust is toward its own hearers and readers forty years later. So it is not evangelist tract and it is not a diary or history. It is a Gospel.

Gospel. You have heard the word many times, and know that it means ‘good news’. It is an old term. You could compare it to ‘ghost’. Gospel is to good news and ghost is to spirit, you might say. Yet Mark calls his writing a ‘gospel’. He creates something new. Mark is a writing unlike any other to precede it. It is not popular today any longer, no longer fashionable, to say this. It is however true. Mark is not a history, not a biography, not a novel, not an apocalypse, not an essay, not a treatise, not an epistle. Examples of all these were to hand for him. Mark might have written one of any one of them. He did not. He wrote something else and so in form, in genre, gave us something new. A gospel. His is the first, but not the last.

A wind chime in Scripture.

Tradition: Unity

My sister in law’s minister in Arlington Texas, Stephen Langford, evokes a tradition of unity:

“Unity in diversity, expressed in community.” The term expresses the idea of oneness that embraces differences. In this way of living, differences are viewed as strengths that contribute to enriched life in community with one another. The term is used describe the pattern of relationship in the Godhead as the Three-in-One, in marriage in which the two become one, and in the church as the body of Christ.
“Uniformity is not unity…Perhaps it would be helpful to remember the words of John Wesley from whose ministry the original Wesleyan movement began. In his sermon entitled “A Catholic Spirit,” Wesley asked, “Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion?” In that same sermon, he went on to say, “If your heart is as my heart – if you love God and all mankind, I ask no more – give me your hand.” Wesley is also credited with a saying that originally came from Thomas a Kempis and was a part of the Moravian movement that helped shape Wesley:
“In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, charity (love).” For Wesley, a common commitment to love God and others (the heart) was the grounds of relationship, not agreement. Love, not agreement, was the determining factor in relating to one another.” Langford Blog, Arlington UMC, Texas. Supplied by Rebecca Steimle.

Politics is downstream from culture. Culture is downstream from religion. Religion is downstream from faith. Faith is downstream from a word spoken and heard. In this discreet moment: Do you know God to be a pardoning God?

Granted that your opponent is wrong about everything. But is there something maybe about which he is right, just maybe? If that were so, what would that be?

A wind chime in tradition.

Experience: Consanguinity

North of Boston you come close to the Dominion of Canada. We served two churches on the St. Lawrence river, an hour plus south west of Montreal. You could see the river from our back bedroom. Our friends and parishioners had farms all along the border, a couple of which had land on both sides. The hay looks just about the same, north and south of an utterly invisible border. One autumn my lay leader Earl Friend, one of those with land on both sides, shot a bear near his cow barn. He had strung up the bear to have it drain, so it was hanging between two trees to the left of his front porch. Our daughter Emily was four, and for some lastingly strange reason, I thought she would like to see the bear, so we drove over in our old 1973 Mustang convertible, which had only a few more years in it. Earl took our photo in front of the bear. From the bear to Canada was maybe 30 yards, a stone’s throw. Then, as now, just over the fence, you could have free health care, whatever your annual income, and free education through college, including at globally fine Universities like McGill. Just a stone’s throw away. Our middle class in this country deserves and needs what on the other side of the cow barn they would already have. Education and health care, in a free society, for the sake of the freedom in the society, are far more right than privilege, especially for poor children. Most Americans agree. It is, by reason, a step on toward a common hope. As are full rights for sexual minorities and women. As are fulsome and loving support for churches and community groups. Volunteerism in a free society is not a luxury, it is a necessity.

Or listen to our own victorious Boston Red Sox this week, bringing clear reason to a full moment:

Alex Cora: ‘I was young, inexperienced, and still learning, and I still am’. (Humility)

JBJ: ‘you just need to focus on your preparation’ (Discipline)

JD Martinez: ‘this is not about any one player, this is something we do together, as a team’ (self-giving)

Nathan Eovaldi: (on pitching 6 of 18 innings) ‘I expected to pitch one inning, and one became two became six; that’s the thing about baseball (and life) it is just unpredictable’ (flexibility)

A wind chime in experience.

Reason: Hope

Most reasonable people would agree:

We await a common hope, a hope that our warming globe, caught in climate change, will be cooled by cooler heads and calmer hearts and careful minds.

We await a common hope, a hope that our dangerous world, armed to the teeth with nuclear proliferation, will find peace through deft leadership toward nuclear détente.

We await a common hope, a hope that our culture, awash in part in hooliganism, will find again the language and the song and the spirit of the better angels of our nature.

We await a common hope, a hope that our country, fractured by massive inequality between rich children and poor children, will rise up and make education, free education, available to all children, poor and rich.

We await a common hope, a hope that our nation, fractured by flagrant unjust inequality between rich and poor children, will stand up and make health care, free health care, available to all children, poor and rich.

We await a common hope, a hope that our schools, colleges and universities, will balance a love of learning with a sense of meaning, a pride in knowledge with a respect for goodness, a drive for discovery with a regard for recovery.

We await a common hope, a hope that our families, torn apart by abuse and distrust and anger and jealousy and unkindness, will sit at a long Thanksgiving table, this autumn, and share the turkey and pass the potatoes, and slice the pie, and, if grudgingly, show kindness and pity to one another.

We await a common hope, a hope that our decisions in life about our callings, how we are to use our time and spend our money, how we make a life not just a living, will be illumined by grace and generosity.

We await a common hope, a hope that our grandfathers and mothers, in their age and infirmity, will receive care and kindness that accords with the warning to honor father and mother that you own days be long upon the earth.

We await a common hope, finally a hope not of this world, but of this world as a field of formation for another, not just creation but new creation, not just life but eternal life, not just health but salvation, not just heart but soul, not just earth, but heaven.

Most of us would agree.

A wind chime in reason.

We listen again for the windchimes of hope, whispering and singing to us, beckoning us into and out from an unseen future. The chimes ring today in Scripture, Tradition, Experience, and Reason.

-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean.

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 11.4.2018 at 11:00 am

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Sunday
October 28

The Hope of Freedom

By Marsh Chapel

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Job 42:1-6

Mark 10:46-52

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One: Bird

Overhead an eagle soars, on quiet summer days when the lake is empty. He does not come out on the weekend, or when there is noise, or when the boats are numerous. But in the quiet he sails and soars, hunting the lake with an eagle eye, hunting for a next fish meal. You turn over swimming, floating on your back, and over he goes, right overhead, a beautiful long wing span against the blue gray sky. On the off occasion, twice say a summer, he has his partner with him, his mate, eagles mating as they do for life. But not today. He commands the sky, and all below with a grace, a soaring beauty, a regal flight. Beyond the gulls, the sparrows, the robins, the red winged blackbirds, the cardinals, the finches, the bluebirds, the blue-jays, even beyond the blue heron, just there soars the eagle. Karl Barth recited and repeated, ‘The Gospel is the freedom of a bird in flight’.

Freedom. In the summer our Marsh sermon series surveyed the expanse, the freeing breadth of hope. This fall we have listened for the wind chimes of hope, setting us loose, setting us free, in presence, in pressure, in peace, in beauty, in healing, in welcome, and in faith. What does the God of Hope (Rom. 15:13) bring us today, now that we set hope next to freedom? What is the hope of freedom, for you, a woman or man of faith?

‘For freedom Christ has set us free’, intones the Apostle: ‘stand fast therefore and do not be enslaved again’ (Gal. 5: 1). Paul addresses the Galatians,53ad, with regard to the superiority of faith to religion, with regard to the superiority of gospel to tradition, and in affirmation of the gospel freedom to include the Gentiles by grace. Paul’s words, remembered, recited and repeated, became the core of the Protestant Reformation501 years ago, a Reformation we recall and honor the last Sunday each October--today. The same sense of freedom, the expansion of human freedom, nurtured the Renaissance,the renaissance of learning, art, music, philosophy, and science that over several hundreds more years has given us our current world, culture and life. Market capitalism emerged steadily in the light and under the wingspan of religious and artistic freedoms. Political democracy came along as well, in fits and starts, starts and fits which have yet to cease, as we are relearning in this decade. The freedom of the person of faith, unshackled from the bonds of institutional religion, grown in the expansion of culture and art, given substance and support through the burgeoning accumulation of social and personal capital, and protected by democratic governments, ideals, and practices, surely is a great or the great blessed happy victory of the modern era.

Two: Fromm

Or is it?

Freedom, the freedom of the person of faith, surely is a great or the great blessed happy victory of the modern era.

Or is it?

In a time when suddenly and unhappily we witness a broad willingness to taste test authoritarianism, a dark willingness to give over personal freedom for the sake of a putative security, or a rage for order, or a minimization of the more complex forms of self-government, just how precious is freedom, and at what cost?

You know, a sermon seems like a monologue. Yet it is not. A sermon is a thicket, a tangled webbing of dialogues, including in the spoken word, the moment of the word. The dialogues include memory, Scripture, experience, prayer, illumination, fear, dreams and the uncanny evocation of the divine. For instance, today’s sermon comes in part out of a June dialogue. We had been invited to speak a half dozen times, sermons and lectures, for the New England Annual Conference, in session for part of a week in Manchester, NH. The forgiving and kind Methodists there received these pronouncements with a good grace, more than deserved. You will not be surprised that the Gospel of John appeared, now and then, that week. After one such presentation which probably, like the peace of God, ‘passed all understanding and endured forever’, one fellow paused in reflection on what he had heard. He may have been a retired minister, though with sadness the name escaped collection and so memory. Trailing after his response came this: What you said reminded me very much of Erich Fromm. I stuffed the reference in my so-called memory. Erich Fromm. I had not thought of him in decades. With the eagle soaring in the summer, I dug him out. You see about sermons and dialogues. Here, five months later, the dialogue emerges, continues, continues its wayfaring course in discourse. For Fromm acutely inspected both hope and freedom, the theme of our sermon today.

That is, in 1941 the philosopher Erich Fromm wrote a striking, seminal book on this question, ‘just how precious is freedom, and at what cost?’. Its English title is Escape From Freedom. Fromm explores the dark side of freedom, religious, cultural, economic and political. As an expatriate German, watching the events in Europe at the time, Fromm was trying to understand, from the perspective of social psychology, the rise of authoritarianism in his native land, but also, and more broadly and in a general way, to understand how people and groups of people become enthralled with, enamored of, and committed to authoritarianism. His argument is direct and simple: real freedom is real difficult to handle, and, when pressed, people move to escape from the demands of freedom by investment in authority. Freedom is scary. Freedom is demanding. Freedom is dangerous. Freedom is difficult. Better to hide underneath the sturdy voice of an authoritarian leader, preferably one who denies all responsibility for wrong or hurt, the rock solid social identity of a mass of people, the commitment, itself often quite costly, to a cause that sets aside personal freedom, so lonely and hard and uncertain, for group support under authoritarian wings.

Freedom has a dark side. Our current national dilemma, in this unfolding decade of humiliation, presses us and makes us present to the question of freedom. It is more than issues of political liberalism—gay rights, women’s rights—that besets us. It is more than issues of economic socialism—ample education and abundant health care—that concerns us. It is more than cultural conservatism—unflagging Sunday worship and vigorous voluntary associations-- that beckons us. As important as all these are. It is more than a highjacked national narrative, more than a collapse of moral conscience and compass, more than the protections of civil society, the customs and ceremonies of courtesy meant to protect us from the pipe bombs of unbridled, unhinged rhetoric, that beset, concern and beckon us. As important as all these are. It goes deeper, this our current malaise. It goes down deep into the caverns and caves of freedom. How will we live, in hope, with freedom?

Erich Fromm warned us.

He warned us about the dread of freedom: Freedom has made (us) isolated…anxious and powerless…(which) is unbearable(x)…(One’s) brain lives in the 20^thcentury, but she art of most (people) still live in the stone age(xvi)…To feel completely alone and isolated leads to mental disintegration just as physical starvation leads to death (17)…enhancing the individual’s feeling of aloneness and insignificance (38)…(We) becomes more independent, self-reliant, and critical, (but we) become more isolated, alone and afraid…

He showed us the historical origins and outcomes of freedom: Protestantism made the individual face God alone (108)…The prinicipal social avenues of escape in our time are the submission to a leader, as has happened in Fascist countries, and compulsive conforming as is prevalent in our own democracy…

He traced the effects of the lack of hope in freedom: (for) the individual to escape his unbearable feeling of aloneness and powerlessness…(he has) no more pressing need than the one to find somebody to whom he can surrender, as quickly as possible, that gift of freedom which he, the unfortunate creature, was born with…

He unveiled, out of his own experience, and touching too our own, the consequent appeal of authoritarianism: the authoritarian character admires authority and tends to submit to it, but at the same time he wants to be an authority himself…

He described the impact on persons: The authoritarian character loves those conditions that limit human freedom…The individual ceases to be himself; he adopts entirely the kind of personality offered to him by cultural patterns (say in rallies?) and he therefore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect him to be…love for the powerful and hatred of the powerless… (is) fertile soil for the rise of Fascism anywhere (240)

He pointed to a couple of daily consequences—see if they sound familiar: …to lose the sense of discrimination between a decent person and a scoundrel…the fear of death lives an illegitimate existence among us (245)…

Beloved. Be alert, on the qui vive, watchful, be sober, be watchful for nascent authoritarianism. In the daily denigration and disfigurement of facts, of truth. In the weekly demonization of ‘others’, of those other, in religion, in race, in nation, in orientation. In the dishonoring of other seats of power, like the judiciary, like the press, like the churches and other religious communities. In the steady denial of fact and responsibility.

Yet Fromm offered a word of hope in freedom, what he called positive freedom: positive freedom consists in the spontaneous activity of the total, integrated personality (257)…THERE IS ONLY ONE MEANING OF LIFE: THE ACT OF LIVING ITSELF… (In positive freedom (one)) can relate (one)self spontaneously to the world in love and work, in the genuine expression of (one’s) emotional, sensuous and intellectual capacities (139)..

Spontaneity. Comraderie. Emotion. Intellect. Where you come alongside these, according to Fromm’s work, there we might say is a hope in freedom.

Three: Community

We can appreciate, perhaps, a bit of what Fromm said, even in our immediate setting. The academic world intensifies and crystallizes these tendencies, especially under the aegis and aspect of technology. Spontaneity? Emotion? Comraderie? Creativity? These can be hard to find, and to nurture, in academia. Consider the rigorous path for the professor, for example. 7 punishing years of graduate school (following on 16 earlier years) lead to the Ph.D. Another 7 punishing years of junior appointment lead to tenure. After 30 years, perhaps, one gains tenure. Think of the commitment to excellence, the attention to detail, in that life work, forged in freedom. You can stray from the path, but you cannot then complete the journey. Consider the rigorous path for the undergraduate student at an institution like ours, for example. Begin with earning a 1420 on the SAT, then continue in classrooms and courses where not some but almost all are as able as you. Think of the commitment to excellence, the attention to detail, in that life work, forged in freedom. You can stray from the path, but you cannot then complete the journey. Further, as Sherry Turkle and others are showing us, we have only the slightest inkling thus far of what the massive newer technologies are doing with our students, ourselves, our world. We have done a great deal to teach teenagers how to pick up devices, but have done virtually nothing to teach them about how to put them down.

Thanks to each one of you, for all the challenges of academic life, here at Marsh Chapel, week by week, you sing the song, tell the tale, and ring the bell of freedom! It is a remarkable, uncanny gift you offer! The spontaneity of conversation. The comraderie of communion. The emotion of song. The Intellect of faith. You sing! In four part harmony! Right here in the heart of a great University!

Real freedom, that for which we affirm Christ has set us free, positive freedom, resounds with spontaneous, physical, emotional, mindful, personal work and love. The move away from positive reedom comes from alienation, isolation, anxiety, and fear. The move toward positive freedom comes from independence, responsibility, thinking, feeling and willing--forged in the soul. Every one of our lives inhabits two dimensions, one psychological and one sociological, personal and social holiness both.

As the community of faith, then, we want to be and become that place and space where one can listen another’s soul into life, where the urges and longings toward positive freedom are protected and nurtured, where the demonic drives in culture and economy are called out and known by name, where we have each other’s back, where we live and give the benefit of the doubt as a means of grace, where we hold up and hold out and hold onto the freedom of the human being. A place where, like last night, in the historic nave of this Chapel, the music of joy, the music of majesty, the music of brilliance, the music of gladness—the music of Mozart—plays the accompaniment to our ongoing daily struggle, in freedom, the daily struggle of faith, to withstand what we cannot understand, the ongoing struggle of faith to eradicate violence and religious animus from the earth.

There is hope in freedom, when positive freedom baptizes us in sensuality, emotion, spontaneity and intellect. Thanks to each one of you, for all the challenges of academic life, here at Marsh Chapel, week by week, you sing the song, tell the tale, and ring the bell of freedom! May we contine to live by such hope!

Yes, there is hope in freedom, but it comes at cost, and it comes with work. Jurgen Moltmann appends our benedictus: in Theology of Hope: “Hope finds in Christ not only a consolation in suffering but also the protest of the divine against suffering. That is why faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience” (p. 21).

-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean.

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 10.28.2018 at 11:00 am
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Sunday
October 21

The Present Moment (2)

By Marsh Chapel

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Mark 10: 17-34

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Frontispiece

The Present Moment.

Lift up your hearts in the present moment, to hear the good news within the present moment.

A word of faith in a pastoral voice toward a common hope.

Hope has two handsome sons, Presence and Pressure. Both meet you in the Present Moment.

The presence of Love. The pressure to Love. The presence of Good. The pressure toward Good.

I need Thy presence every passing hour;

What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?

Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?

Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

The Present Moment: The presence of Good. The pressure toward Good.

Pressure

Hear good news. Just as the present moment, for all its dangers and diminutions, reveals presence, the presence of Love, as we affirmed last week, so too the present moment, for all its tweets and humiliations, reveals the pressure of Good, the pressure toward Good, as we affirm this week. Hope’s second handsome son is pressure.

After worship here at Marsh Chapel last Sunday, you may have noticed that our student mission team set up a table on the Plaza. They are called MOVE, this team, the acronym of whose actual words I can never remember, but it doesn’t matter. These our beloved students are ON THE MOVE. And that is the point, is it not? They went out to Commonwealth Avenue, armed only with a table, a box of pamphlets, their camaraderie, and also, one guesses, for that present moment, perhaps one other thing: the wind of pressure blowing their lives, like leaves in the breeze, to paraphrase Rowan Williams, toward some Good, toward some Goodness. They spent part of the day passing out information on how to register to vote.

They were moved to pressure, to press on, to impress, to press on toward the high prize, to do something good. Who knows whence that sort of impetus emerges? But it does. In the present. In the present moment. And of sudden you are greeted by Hope’s second handsome son, Pressure.

Notice in our Gospel how the rich young ruler presses. He presses the point. He is not satisfied with a generic response, in this case an odd listing and partial assortment of the commandments. Jesus has answered, giving the points of the law, though notice only some, and notice in odd order. But in the question, and again in the answer, there is a pressure, there is pressure. Is this why the church’s memory of the conversation includes the phrase, ‘and Jesus loved him?’ The Good presses the rich young ruler to question. The Good presses the Lord Christ, in his Risen Voice, Remembered and Interpreted in the Life of the Earliest Church, to answer. One thing you lack.

There is, in this Present Moment, in every present moment the pressure to goodness, to act in goodness. We come to church for such a reminder, especially in a national season of the shredding of ceremonies of courtesy, in a national season of the apotheosis of the uncivil. And a willingness on the part of many to support or countenance the denigration of civil society, and the abuse of inherited forms of culture meant to protect us from our basest selves.

Mark 10

Look for a moment again at our gospel reading. Barbara Brown Taylor said once, if memory serves, that the church usually misses the point of this teaching, either by understanding the passage exclusively in terms of money, or by avoiding altogether any discussion of money. She said further that money is like nuclear power, potent with power for good, but requiring careful management, protections against disasters, recognition of what can go wrong, and a humility in practice.

In the city of Rome, under the thumb of Caesar, Mark in 70ad rehearses Jesus’ lakeside lessons. Gathered in secrecy, hearing news of a Jerusalem temple in flames, rightly fearing impending persecutions, Mark’s Roman Christians heard hope in these teachings, so frequently as today related to wealth. If you notice only one word in this passage, mark Mark’s inclusion of “persecutions” (vs. 30).

For there is an urgency to Mark’s passage that Matthew and Luke later left behind. Mark exudes raw energy under the pressure of apocalyptic expectation. Sell and give! Notice the telltale apocalyptic marks: eternal life (the coming resurrection of the dead); this age and the age to come (the heart of Jewish longing); camel and needle (end of an age hyperbole); none is good but God (the apocalyptic distance of heaven from earth); the reign of God (the essential apocalyptic hope); persecutions (harbinger of the end); last become first (apocalyptic justice). But there is no mistaking the primary announcement: life is found in the refreshing lake water of giving not on the dry shoreline of having. Yes, you must honor the past, including the commandments. Yes, we must conserve and protect. But as Luke Timothy Johnson used to say: “the tradition of the church is meant to open the future!” Conserve what you can and protect what you must, then give—develop, give—enhance, give—open the reign of God! This is what life is all about. And be shrewd about it.

Toward the end of one remarkable election in California, a leader in LA memorably implored his people to look to the future: “Think of your future. Look to the next generation. See what is out ahead. Why if you vote for (candidate x) it would be like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders!” He could speak apocalyptic.

Mark’s Way

And Mark is clearly an apocalyptic writing, although clarity about this has only fully emerged in the last generation or so. Mark expects the end of all things in his own time, 70ad and so the Markan Jesus so instructs his followers, 30ad. In fact, Mark expects the culmination of all things, soon and very soon. In this regard, and in regard to his understanding of the cross, Mark has some congruence with the letters of Paul. Given this apocalyptic perspective, should we hear Mark’s words as those of a critic or those of a coach?

The first option, Mark the moderate critic, was most piercingly presented almost forty years ago, by a friend of Marsh Chapel, Dr. Theodore Weeden. It has taken some decades for the force and power of his argument to stand up and stand out in comparison to the work of others.

On this view, Mark combats a view of Jesus that will not accept his suffering, his crucifixion. Long after the events of Calvary and Golgotha, spirited and strong people, singing a happy song, have caused the earliest church to forget their baptism, or its meaning. They expect ease, spirit, joy, and, soon, a conquering victory over all that plagues and persecutes them. Mark says ‘no’. To say ‘no’ Mark remembers in delicate detail the story of Jesus’ passion, relying on a source, a document he has inherited. To say ‘no’, Mark pointedly shows the ignorance and cowardice of Peter, at Caesarea Philippi and in Jerusalem. To say ‘no’, Mark criticizes, diminishes the miracles of Jesus, letting them wind away to nothing as the Gospel progresses. To say ‘no’, Mark describes the disciples as diabolical dunces. They didn’t understand it and neither do you, he says. Mark stays within the fold of the inherited story of Jesus, the gospel of teaching and passion, of Galilee and Jerusalem. But he does so as a moderate critic of those who are unrealistic about the suffering that continues, from which the gospel does not deliver, any more than Jesus had been delivered from the cross. Resurrected, yes, delivered, no. On this view, at the heart of Mark there is a bitter dispute in earliest Christianity (imagine that) about what constitutes discipleship and baptism, and Mark is out to prove his opponents wrong. As with the alternative, there is plenty of evidence to support this view.

The alternative, the second option, Mark the critical moderate, has in a way been present for a longer time, and, one could say, is still the more dominant, the majoritarian position, in scholarly interpretation of Mark. The current, culminating presentation of this view is in a two volume Anchor Bible Commentary. It is written by another person with connections to Marsh Chapel, a fellow once on the faculty of Boston University School of Theology, Joel Marcus, now at Duke. On this view, things in Mark’s community are not so much at daggers drawn. There are differences to be sure, but the disagreements are differences among friends. The Markan coaching does not face strong spirit people, committed to an idea of the ‘divine man’. Mark is not so negative about miracles. The disciples are mistaken but not malevolent. The titles for Jesus are not so tellingly convincing. The real trouble is not so much in the community itself (perish the thought), but outside, among the potential deceivers of the church. Hence, on this view, Mark has the job of gently reminding his hearers of the cross, of suffering, of discipline, of the cruciform character of Christianity, as a moderate, a critical moderate, but a moderate more than a critic.

A Critic and a Coach

In the Present Moment, the pressure toward the Good can come in a voice on the one hand critical, or in a voice on the other hand coaching. You might think about how you use your voice, now and then, in one form or another. Children need both. So do parents. While the jury is out, still, about Mark, whether more critic or more coach, there is no doubt about his apocalyptic urgency, and there is no doubt about the pressure it applies, in the Present Moment, the pressure to do good, to be good, to practice good, the pressure toward the Good.

Earlier this month, the paper of record in this country carried two articles, one on a Thursday, one on a Saturday. Both were written by friends of yours, Marsh Chapel. Both exhibited this pressure toward the good, Marsh Chapel. Both were written in part to critique and in part to coach. Both voices are known to you.

Andrew Bacevich, until just recently a professor at Boston University, has been among you. You know his voice. He has been here to teach in our small group, to provide a chapel forum for us, to speak in trenchant terms, terms full of the pressure toward good. This month he wrote in the NY Times about Black Hawk Down, 25 years later, in his ongoing quest to challenge, to critique, our national reliance on large scale military might. We might have learned something, back then, he says. He presses us. ‘The contemporary battlefield is more likely to be urban and congested…investment in conventional warfare will continue to have little relevance…policy should consider…that the wars themselves…might be futile.’ And then, the clincher: ‘With a bit more effort, and a generous dose of humility...’ we might have learned these lessons 25 years ago. Here is a close, critical voice, part of the proven pressure toward good, latent in every one present moment.

Robert Pinsky, former US poet laureate, and a professor at Boston University, wrote two days later, in the same space. You remember him, Marsh Chapel. Pinsky came and helped us honor and respect those who died on nineleven, ten years later. He brought himself, he brought his poetry, he brought his voice, right here onto our plaza, in our 2011 service of remembrance. You know his voice. This month he wrote in the NY Times about patriotism. He presses us. He is writing for students, including those within earshot this morning, saying, ‘Sometimes you read something when you are young and it stays with you forever’. He then remembers a citation of George Washington in 1783 ‘in which he described the good fortune of the new nation: its natural resources, its political independence and freedom, and the Age of Reason of the country’s birth, and age of the free cultivation of letters, the unbounded extension of commerce, the progressive refinement of manners, the growing liberality of sentiment, and above all the pure and benign light of Revelation’. And then, in some emotion, and with the great skill of a great poet, he simply remembers the story of Peter Rodino, a humble congressman from his native New Jersey, pressed into duty, we might say under the pressure toward the Good, in the Watergate hearings. Here is a close, coaching voice, part of the proven pressure toward good, latent in every one present moment.

You are not alone in the hunger and thirst for the good. Voices both critical and coaching are among you, to help, to guide, to heal. Listen for them. Listen to them. And learn from them, learn to find your own voice, both critic and coach.

A Question

On Monday evening this past week, you may have walked past the cafeteria at 100 Bay State Road. There you would have seen a lone woman, sitting in a chair. Her hair gray, her presence little noticed, her age probably making her eligible for Medicare, armed only with a table, a box of voter registration pamphlets, and also, one guesses, for that present moment, perhaps one other thing: the wind of pressure blowing her life, like leaves on the breeze, to paraphrase Rowan Williams, toward some Good, toward some Goodness. She spent part of that evening passing out information on how to register to vote. Maybe a couple of generations ago she was member of a student group like MOVE. Or maybe she is foretaste of what our students will be and do a couple of generations from now, when their hair is gray, and they are eligible for Medicare. ‘Good for you’ we said to her. ‘I’m trying’ she replied.

And you? May I ask you a question, to conclude this sermon? Will you, before you leave this Sanctuary, consider one thing you might do toward the Good, in the next week, something you have not yet to this moment designed? In the present moment?

Coda

The Present Moment.

Lift up your hearts in the present moment, to hear the good news within the present moment.

A word of faith in a pastoral voice toward a common hope.

Hope has two handsome sons, Presence and Pressure. Both meet you in the Present Moment.

The presence of Love. The pressure to Love. The presence of Good. The pressure toward Good.

I need Thy presence every passing hour;

What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?

Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?

Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

The Present Moment: The presence of Good. The pressure toward Good.

-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean.

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 10.21.2018 at 11:00 am

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Sunday
October 14

The Present Moment

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to hear the full service

Hebrews 4:12-16

Mark 10:17-22

Click here to hear the sermon only

Frontispiece

The Present Moment.

Lift up your hearts in the present moment, to hear the good news within the present moment.

A word of faith in pastoral voice toward a common hope.

A word of faith in a pastoral voice toward a common hope.

Hope has two handsome sons, Presence and Pressure. Both meet you in the Present Moment.

The presence of Love. The pressure to Love. The presence of Good. The pressure toward Good.

I need Thy presence every passing hour;

What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?

Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?

Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

The Present Moment.

Lift up your hearts in the present moment, to the hear the good news within the present moment.

Presence

‘In Thy Presence There is Fullness Of Joy.’ (Psalm 16).

In the Present, the present moment, come with me, to become open again, open to Presence. Around you, yes, racism and misogyny and sexism and xenophobia and rapacity and mendacity and perversity and predation. Yes. So, all the moreso, your being hungers for Presence. Presence, as our Psalm 16 acclaims this morning, the fullness of joy. Simchat’ my Rabbi and friend tells me. It means joy. Simchat Torah. Serve the Lord with Joy. Come with me, aside, just a moment.

Come with me, aside, just a moment, to recall one morning, an early morning early in August this year, wherein there was an experience of Presence.

The coffee was percolating in the cottage kitchen. Wait for it with me, why don’t you, and come sit down on the living room couch. Through the front open windows you might hear the lapping of the lake water against the shoreline, carried by a steady breeze out of the west, north west. Most of the time, there, the wind comes from the west, blowing Midwestern weather through us and on to Boston. The lap, lap, lap continued, somewhat in rhythm with and somewhat out of rhythm with, the music of Liszt by radio. The water and the waves are there all the time, background music to the day every day. We should carry some summer into winter. This day you could hear the surf, though surf is too much of a word for that little lake. Just the steady lap, lap, lap of the water on the shore.

The quiet (can you hear it?) was full. There was and is no sound, other than natural sound, most of the time, mid-week, in the mornings there. Little to no traffic on the road or on the water; little to no talk, on the road or on the water. The sound of the silence is the most pronounced audition of the day, in such contrast to our life really anywhere else. A gull now and then will sing out—our five year-old granddaughter has learned nearly exactly to mimic the gull song, ‘Gina’s’ song, she calls it, as she names all gulls Gina. The murmuring of the blessed classical music, soft but audible, rumbles, morning by morning.

You are, as I was, unusually, all alone. It can be discomfiting, especially for the extroverts among us, that lonely quiet. For some weeks, with two days excepted, we had the full joy of some assortment of grandchildren, as few as one, as many as seven, and their parents, as few as one as many as six, and friends, neighbors, visitors, in sixes and sevens, all. Jan though had gone away the day before, to see our daughter, to make a call on my elderly mother, to lunch with old friends, and to see her former work colleagues. So the company I kept for a day and night and a day was my own. It can be discomfiting, especially for the extroverts among us, that lonely quiet.

With the coffee susurrating, sit for moment, and feel the cool breeze through the windows, and hear, though not as a focused listening, the lap, lap, lap of the water on the shoreline. That morning you could feel and see faintly, a storm brewing out of the west, full clouds coming dark with rain, but still a distance off. I picked up the book I was reading, where it had been left the quiet night before, following a solitary dinner, prepared by, made by, and pre-cooked by Jan, warmed and consumed alone by me. The book is that of Paul Theroux, Deep South, his masterful journal and reflection on a year of travels due south of his home on Cape Cod. You may have known him from his earlier book, The Mosquito Coast, and from reviews of his other two dozen. This one had been casually left by my dear friend Jon Clinch, himself a world renowned writer, author of Finn, Kings of the Earth, and several other novels. ‘You might like this’ Jon said, following the fireworks of July 4.

That morning, the book was open to a passage about Julius Rosenwald. Rosenwald became the head of Sears, Roebuck in 1909. He was the son of German-Jewish immigrants. Most have not ever heard of him. Theroux’s book is in the great tradition of travel books. You may have loved John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie. You may have loved William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways. Well, Theroux apparently did too, and set out to visit the least known part of America, to him, the deep south. He comes along poor country roads, and the stories along those roads, with the clean, bright eyes of a genuinely interested visitor, a Yankee a long way from home. And he, Theroux, revels in what he finds. By the help of an African American barber, chef, and preacher, he finds the story of Rosenwald. Julius Rosenwald gave his substantial fortune to build rural schools for black children in the deep south. They have a particular architecture, fit for their role and setting, large glass windows facing the southern sun, open and flexible rooms and walls to be used for many different needs, and a distinctive aspect given by those at Tuskegee who planned them. How many? Five thousand. There are 5000 Rosenwald schools in 15 states, the first built in 1917. Rosenwald died in 1932. He gave his fortune to poor black children in the rural deep south.

Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

For some reason, with the breeze blowing, and now the dark clouds somehow headed north and away, with Franz Liszt’s meditative music alive and round about (he whose name you can never recall whether to spell with an s or with a z—(which is it choir?) because—it’s both!), this little account of Rosenwald, in Theroux’s graceful hand, choked me, moved me. I think it would do so for you too.

Once I had a high school meeting set with a black preacher and his church in Syracuse. My mother, lightly but sternly, said as I left something like this: You should try to appreciate what those good people in that church have had to live with down there on the south side of Syracuse, you want to be respectful of what others have been through. None of us in this country, even those of us educated at Nottingham High School, Bob, or going on Ohio Wesleyan University, Bob, has really ever had enough education about slavery, about what the conditions of that 250 year hell were, about what the ongoing effect to this day in the 150 years since have been, about how this country and its notable capitalism, and the very sky line of our dear city, the making of American Capitalism and every dollar still swirling in its rinse basin today, came in part from stolen land and slave labor, the trail of tears and the middle passage, the five arable states of the new south and 4 million chattel slaves—beaten, raped, lynched, chained—to till it. Even your or I, Bob, could make money with free land and free labor. And our economy still depends on the same two features, abuse of the environment and abuse of labor, to make the profits demanded by the market. We walk through it every day, and hardly notice. How do we do this? She said.

These are the kind of memories a breeze, a little music, and a quiet morning can conjour.

Now with the coffee almost done, and the reading of Theroux in motion, the lap, lap, lap again in the breeze, the lap, lap, lap again, from the lakeshore, the lap, lap, lap of, well, the present moment. For three generations now our family has been itinerant, moving from church to church, from pulpit to pulpit, from town to town and from hidden communal misery to hidden communal misery. Every town, every city, has secret failures, as every heart has secret sorrows. So the lake, the very modest little lake, and the cottage, the very small humble cottage, the north western tip of Appalachia about which the most remarkable thing to say is how little it has changed since 1959, becomes a place of reverie, a place of memory, a place of home life, the place called home. Home is such a big word. That also means it is a place where hard memories are present and can be faced. Hard things. Accidents. Mistakes. Betrayals. Deaths. Losses. Failures. On this morning, in the lap, lap, lap, and with the Liszt, Liszt, Liszt, and in the breeze, perhaps mainly the breeze, with the coffee brewed, these readily come up to mind in the morning, if they haven’t already made their nocturnal appearance in the buzzard wildness of dreams. The water on the shore brings a steady reminder that life gets lived in the aftermath of disappointment. The breeze from the west, with and without raincloud, brings the confidence that even the hurt, the shame of the wrong can be endured. The music, light and lingering, brings along the recollection of happiness that is more true for its injury in sorrow, its debasement in waste, its limitation in grief.

Let us stop, here. In the little air, in the lap, lap, lap, in the dead quiet. In the present moment. There. This is what the Psalm means. This is what prayer touches. This is what the divines felt. This is what Ralph Harper wrote about, in his treatise, On Presence. This is what old Huston Smith then of MIT said of God, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence…We are in good hands, and so it behooves us to bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of love. This is what Alistair Macleod depicted in his stories of Nova Scotia, concluding, all of us are better when we’re loved. This may be what my Dad meant when he said that he had never seen anyone die fearing death. This is what the black cold of the Pyrenees was saying to me, about vocation, in the deep winter of 1974. This is what you carry into surgery, as the anesthesia kicks in. This is the miracle of the present moment. Presence. Hope has a handsome son named Presence. Wordsworth: Eternity in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower. Hammarskjold; ‘God does not die on the day we cease to believe in a personal Deity, but we die on the day our lives cease to be illumined by a radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder whose source lies beyond all reason.’

Chesterton: the world does not lack for wonders, but only for a sense of wonder. This is the refutation, at the last, of disenchantment by enchantment. This is the overflowing giddiness of the getting up morning hour of the day when the stars begin to fall of the of the light shining in darkness that has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory in the face of…the present moment. Psalms: 1, 19, 22, 23, 33, 46, 51, 61, 95, 96, 100, 121, 139. Psalm 16, in Thy presence there is fullness of joy.

It was only a half-second. It was only an un-holdable, ungraspable flicker. It was only the breeze and the book and the coffee and the music, the lake and the Liszt, and the memory and the lap, lap, lap of the water on the shoreline.

Take with you this week a sense of presence. Take with you this week a feeling of presence. Take with you this week a quickened apperception, awareness of the gift of one day, one day, one day, lap, lap, lap. Take with you this week the spirit, given in the present moment. And practice, with Brother Lawrence of old, the presence of the good, the presence of God. Do so here at Marsh Chapel. Sunday evening, right here, with prayers and spirituals sung by the Inner Strength Gospel Chorus. Monday, right here, the compline quiet and sturdy liturgy. Tuesday, right here, with creative pause. Wednesday, right here, with a guitar at 11am in the morning and a sung eucharist at 5:30 in the evening. Thursday noon, right here, and maybe especially, with quiet, silent silence. (The best thing at Marsh Chapel is ’nothing’—we leave the sanctuary open in silence, and open to…Presence.)

And what of pressure, Hope’s other handsome son? The pressure toward the good, in the question of the Rich young Ruler today—‘what must I do?’. For that, we must come back next Sunday, when the Gospel of the Present Moment is acclaimed, not only in Presence, but also within Pressure, the pressure to love.

Coda

The Present Moment.

Lift up your hearts in the present moment, to hear the good news within the present moment.

A word of faith in pastoral voice toward a common hope.

A word of faith in a pastoral voice toward a common hope.

Hope has two handsome sons, Presence and Pressure. Both meet you in the Present Moment.

The presence of Love. The pressure to Love. The presence of Good. The pressure toward Good.

I need Thy presence every passing hour;

What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?

Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?

Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

The Present Moment.

Lift up your hearts in the present moment, to the hear the good news within the present moment.

-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean.

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 10.14.2018 at 11:00 am
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Sunday
September 30

The Bach Experience

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to listen to the full service

James 5:13-20

Mark 9:38-50

Click here to listen to the sermon only

The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill

Those who have paused, here, or now, to worship with us at Marsh Chapel in the last decade, are aware that we lift the Gospel, come Cantata Sundays, in word and music, together, juntos, in harmony.

Bach brings us the reach of beauty around the globe, a global sphere of orientation. Bach brings us a stretch toward the universal, the reach up and out to what fully lasts, truly matters, and really counts. Bach brings us an artistic angle of vision, rooted in Scripture and in an earlier Lutheran garden, nonetheless known by heart and in the heart, far and near, with those, today you and me, who will pause for the offering of the gift of faith. Bach brings us beauty, a paean for sure to the true and the good, but no avoidance of the beautiful. In our time, this hour, especially this week, we can truly appreciate, benefit from such a global orientation, a high universal reach, a feeling in faith, and the bathing of such beauty.

Given the maelstrom of this moment in our current culture, the wind blasts of charge and counter charge, the examples of courage and also the instances of failures in courage, near and far, we, come Sunday, maybe especially this Sunday, look for the God who is a rock in a weary land. Said Dr. Emilie Townes, last Tuesday, ‘we want to cultivate a vibrant community of hope… we hope to beget an ever more piercing faithfulness’. An ever more piercing faithfulness.

Today we receive the gift in memory of the faith of the church, and we give ear to the beauty of our first Bach Cantata of the year. We are truly ‘blessed’ as our Gospel affirms. All the senses—sight, sound, scent, touch, taste—are enlivened today.

This is truly good news, especially for those who may be in mortal need of a living reminder, as the Scritpure says, that we are ‘children of God’. For we can sometimes acutely need such a reminder of belonging, meaning and empowerment. We are acquainted with the night. You are acquainted with the night. As our New England poet memorably put it:

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

O luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

To such acquaintance does our worship this morning minister, and our affirmations of faith, and the beauty of Bach. Tell us, if you will Dr. Jarrett, how best we can listen for the gospel today, in and within this marvelous cantata.

Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett

Today’s cantata represents a high water mark in the Baroque expression of the anxious tortured soul. Bach surpasses himself in each movement of this musical essay, a sermon-in-song. From the outset, the scope of the opening chorus presents a people in supplication – a people yearning for mercy in the countenance of God’s promised judgment. Presented in two contrasting sections, the opening chorus depicts the many facets of our anxiety. After a pleading alto recitative, the soprano aria gives pitch and rhythm to our angst in the form of trembling sixteenth notes in the upper strings. The foundational voice of the continuo silenced for this movement, the soprano and oboe are left to wander alone. The voice of wisdom and New Covenant in Christ’s Cup consoles and comforts in the baritone recitative which follows. The sixteenth notes here take on a caring and supporting motive. Drawing on the security of promised Redemption heard in the baritone recitative, the voice of the tenor with obligato horn professes a confident assurance. The cantata concludes with the expected chorale setting. The trembling sixteenth notes of the soprano aria reappear, but as the chorale proceeds, phrase by phrase the trembling anxiety is calmed – sixteenths become triplets, triplets yield to duples, until their final concluding quarter notes – Indeed Bach’s musical signature of promised redemption and divine grace.

The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill

This moment: in word and worship, in memory and hope, in voice and instrument. We are blessed. We are recalled as children of God: who enter the kingdom of heaven and receive comfort in mourning, and gentle the earth, and crave goodness, and trade in mercy, and see divine grace, and pave with justice the path of peace, and see out to the far side of hardship. Said Howard Thurman, ‘Come Sunday the church says to one and all, the church says to you: you are a child of the living God, you are a child of the living God, you are a child of the living God.

We gather our bits of hard won wisdom: ‘The only way of achieving any degree of self-understanding is by systematically retracing our steps’. ‘One can know fully only what one has oneself made.’ ‘I was once a philosopher, but joy kept breaking in.’ ‘What we borrow, we also bend.’ ‘To surrender the actual experienced good for a possible ideal good is the struggle.’

Somewhere, sometime, it may be, you will find yourself in receipt of the gift of faith. It may be a faith recounted in the Niceaen creed. But it also may be faith as simple, and pure, and true, as the courage to be, the real courage to be. To be and speak. To speak and bear witness. To bear witness, for all the dangers about, and to tell the truth. To tell the truth, and to get up again the next day. Your restoration in faith may be as Lutheran and Scriptural as the substitutionary atonement of tradition, ‘the sacrificial death that wipes out guilt’. Or it may be faith shorn of religious clothing, clean and clear: ‘a courage welling up from a deep and hidden place’ (Senator Blumenthal quoting Senator Graham, from Graham’s book about work with brave witnesses as a lawyer with sex crimes (9/27/18). Either way, you have, say today, a restoration in faith. Faith you can remember, return to be, rely on, when faith, being faith, is, finally all you have left. Receive the gift of faith in music and word this Lord’s Day.

Then go and live!

As one said: ‘I have only just a minute,  Only sixty seconds in it. Forced upon me, can't refuse it. Didn't seek it, didn't choose it. But it's up to me to use it, I must suffer if I lose it, Give account if I abuse it. Just a tiny little minute’. But eternity is in it.’

Our music sings it so:

Now, I know, You shall quiet in me

my conscience which gnaws at me.

Your faithful love will fulfill

what You Yourself have said:

that upon this wide earth

no one shall be lost,

rather shall live forever,

if only he is filled with faith.

-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean. & Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music.

posted in Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music, The Bach Experience, The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 09.30.2018 at 11:00 am
Tags: Bach Experience, Robert Hill, Scott Jarrett

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Sunday
September 16

Hope that is Seen is not Hope

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to listen to the entire service

James 3:1-12

Mark 8:27-38

Click here to listen to the sermon only

Frontispiece

Hope that is seen is not hope. Who hopes for what he sees? We hope for what we do not see, and what for it with patience.

Our denomination bade farewell to one of its great matriarchs this summer, Barbara Steen, who with her husband the Rev. Tom Steen mentored generations of clergy, especially regarding invitation in outreach and fellowship. Chuck Foster (Educating Clergy)Is an example. Their example teaches us about hope. In fact, Barb lived out the sense and substance of the Letter to the Romans, chapters 1,3,5,8,12,15 (here verses are recited in the sermon).

What gracious good news to recall in this era of racism, sexism, misogyny, xenophobia, irresponsibility, perversity, rapacity, and, especially, mendacity. Listen again to James, and to Mark.

The Tongue

If ever there were an age that could hear, and appreciate, the teaching of James about the tongue as a fire, it is our own. You know, the preacher here does not need to bring exegesis to bear, or to give explanation for the wisdom proffered, or to bring examples, many or few. We know in our evenings of listening to the cable news. We hear in our mornings of commuting with the radio on. We read and learn and inwardly digest what speech can do for ill. We are coming to a point where even James 3 is too tepid, too mild to describe our national condition. At some point we will need to repair to Amos, and to drink the hard cold medicine of his teaching. When we wreck the use of words without pause, you do come to a time when words no longer work. You have stripped the gears. You have shredded the fabric. You have cut the muscle. And no one can speak the truth and no can hear the truth any longer.

Behold the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord said to me, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘A plumb line’. Then the Lord said, ‘Behold I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass by them; the high places of Isaac will be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid to waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword’. Amos 7: 7-8.

‘Behold the days are coming’ says the Lord God, ‘when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east, they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.’ Amos 8: 11-12

Mark 8: 24-37

To renounce oneself, said John Chrysostom is ‘to treat oneself as if one were another person’ (Marcus, II, 624). Consider oneself as every day on the edge of death. Death makes us mortal. Facing death makes us human. We live at the intersection of present advent and future hope. What good is the greatest possession if there is no possessor to enjoy it? ‘Take up the cross’ is a reference to the beginning of the journey, and the next part, ‘follow me’ refers to the ongoing life of faith. Baptism, first, you could say, Communion, second, you could say.

We like Peter have aversion to suffering, as did Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus is more than a prophet. But he is not less than a prophet.

Mark’s harsh portrayal of Peter as ‘Satan’ is too much for Luke, who omits it later, and that reaction was probably not unique, for we can understand it too.

Hope that is seen is not hope. So your preachers this summer reminded you: Br. Whitney, Dr. Walton, Rev. Gaskell, Dr. Coleman, Rev. Donahue, and the dean, speaking about hope and righteousness, hope and freedom, hope and disappointment, hope and children, hope and lying, hope and listening, hope and the sweet aroma of the bread of life, hope and blending blue and red into purple (ok, maybe it was more like violet!), hope and faith.

Seek the Lost: Outreach

Barb and Tom Steen lived out of a desire to seek and to save the lost. That is old language, for sure. But it catches the fire and flavor of their, of her, faith. Many of us have had several helpings of faith, Sunday by Sunday. But for some, for some others, the first meal has yet to be served. That is where some of our youth work, some of our outreach and evangelism, some of our willingness to open the church to others who may at some point need community comes in. AFUMC did this to national recognition in August this year.

Barb loved the camping programs at Watson Homestead and Casowasco. This summer, driving along Route 90, our granddaughter counted up the number of times she will be at, she will have been at Casowasco, this year and next. Many times. Barb would have smiled.

We knew her many years ago, along the lakeshore of Owasco Lake, in the parlors of the building there aptly named ‘Galilee’. We saw there the effect that loving community, caring presence, modulated teaching, all in a naturally beautiful setting can have.

One summer, toward the end of the season, we had a young man of about 15 as a camper. He had never been to camp before. He was a rugged, stout fellow, who could and did pass the swim test, but barely. He was just full of life, and not overly attuned to boundaries. He had to sit out every now and then, but was quite affable about it, not minding the light discipline. He was such an exuberant fellow, it was hard not smile at his various antics. He was having a whale of time, all week long. I was working as the lifeguard so I don’t know how much Scripture he learned, or how much praying he did, or how fully he could articulate his sense of faith. But he was every bit alive, all week. And the meaning of life is in the living of life anyway, isn’t it?

Come Friday, after lunch, our young friend disappeared. He did not show up for rest period, and the later class, nor the swim at 2pm. His counselors were rightly worried. We formed up a search group, and trekked up to Mt Tabor, and hunted across the road in the Highlands, and looked through the gorge and the woods surrounding. No luck. By dinner we were plenty worried, even looking through the waterfront. Then early that evening, I was walking up the railroad track, to the south of the camp, still hunting. There he came, shuffling along. He told me why he ran away. He said that he did not want to go home. He said that the week had been the best one of his life, that he for once friends, that he loved the hiking and meals and swimming, even the evening vespers. He just had never known anything like it. And he did not want to go home, to what he had to go home to. He told me about that, too.

That night, as he had some late supper, he came to something of realization. It wasn’t so much that he could put everything into words. The gist of his thought was along the line that he would go home and he would make the best of it. But he would do it with memory of the week he had had, and that he would not forget, and he would not let the memory of the week fade. He would have to go home, but he could take something new home with him. Another way, another experience, another perspective, a little hope.

That is an example of what Barb and Tom were aimed at, in that part of their ministry. A first helping of faith, shared genuinely, shared authentically, with those who had not yet had a chance to sit down at the table of fellowship and faith. It is what inspired her regular phone calls to our home, in Rochester, as our growing up children would hear, rattled out rapidly, ‘Hi Hon, Barb Steen here, how are you doing, how is school, is your mom there, thanks’. She made her list of 5 or 10 calls she would make every day, and she made them.

Welcome the Stranger: Fellowship

We left New York City suddenly, in 1979, to take a church in Ithaca, in the snows of February. Jan was ill, with child, and both the mother and the in utero baby had survived surgery for an ovarian cyst. The doctor at St. Elizabeth’s in NYC had been unsure whether he could save either. Our conference and Bishop had an open Cornell neighborhood church and we had every need to be in place, be employed, be able to heal and prepare. Ordination—and with it health insurance as a conference member—were months away, in mid-June, near the due date for the birth. As it happened, the child, our first, arrived two weeks late, a gift for some in the family, and a task for others.

We knew no one really, of our age, in the conference at that time. Those were hot, lonely months, with all the pure joy and utter confusion of parenthood’s sudden arrival. The birth of the daughter, that day, July 5,1979, was and remains the happiest day of my life. Whatever joy is, it is not something I can think about without the sight of that little beautiful baby, that beautiful young mother and the delivery which was deliverance too. So we began to stumble around in ministry, writing sermons, making visits, trying to make sense of personal and church budgets, a salary of $8K a year, plus a house.

In early September the phone rang in our little parsonage cottage in Ithaca, at the end of Forest Home Drive. ‘Hi Hon Barb Steen here, how are you doing, how is the ministry, Ithaca has enough committees for everyone to be the chair of at least one, these people don’t want faith they want a graduate course in religion—ugh!—is your wife there?’ We knew Barb and Tom by reputation only, a part of which we were about to see in real time, their commitment to small groups, to welcome, to hospitality, to invitation. She called to invite us to a brunch two weeks hence in the Newfield parsonage, then occupied by Gary and Jeannie Judson. Later in ministry our Syracuse predecessor Rev. Wayne Archer, his wife a Fenton of Fenton glass, reminded us that the Newfield church burned down during his ministry there. Oddly, the DS had said, ‘Archer, light a fire under that church’. Well, Wayne also had served a church in Pennsylvania that hard burned, hence his nickname, ‘the Arson Parson’. But Newfield UMC was rebuilt, and parsonage, as the older ones do, had a big parlor.

Barb had gathered a dozen twenty something couples, including the Judsons and the Hills, who didn’t know each other form Adam’s house cat, for a meal. Half or more had little babies in tow. We sang and prayed a little, ate a little more, and laughed a whole lot more about the oddities of life, young adult life, parenthood, ministry and the loneliness lurking behind and above and underneath them all. She gave us ourselves, by giving us to each other. She gave us ourselves, by giving us to each other. We came alive. The next week the phone rang. ‘Hi hon Barb Steen here, how is the ministry, how is life, how is that beautiful little ‘Emly’ how are your folks Marcia and Irv, wasn’t that a great brunch at Judsons, is Jan there?

From that one gathering friendships formed. One minister then took me to lunch. Another suggested a round of golf. A third saw my car and told to me to come over so that he would teach me to how to change the brake pads. ‘You don’t want to spend money on that. You can’t afford it on $8K a year. I’ll help you’. A fourth came and preached on Christmas Eve, making reference, in earshot of Rudolph, to the blessed taste of venison. Thanks to Bob, to Duane, to Gary, and to Dale. Tom Steen himself got me into a clergy study of the Psalms that lasted two years until we moved north.

The habits of visitation, the habits of welcome, the habits of outreach, the habits of hospitality, the habits of Christian charity and love, all so dearly central to any genuine form of ministry, are not necessarily permanent gifts. They have to be remembered. To be remembered they have to be modeled. To be modeled that have to be practiced. I give you Barb Steen.

Peter Berger (Rumor of Angels) reminded us that the very sense we have of lasting, earthly injustice, of wrongs not and never made right, a real and palpable sentiment, is itself a rumor of something more. Which we cannot see, of course, and of which we do not know, of course. But maybe a heavenly breakfast will again be served, at which the table will seat the resurrection of the just. We hope for what we do not see.

-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean.

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 09.16.2018 at 11:00 am
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Sunday
September 9

Begin With The Hope In Mind

By Marsh Chapel

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Mark 7: 24-37

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Begin with the hope in mind. For there is a healing that hope brings. Begin with hope in mind. For there is a healing that hope brings.

Since her cousins and sister had already jumped into the cold lake, right off the end of the dock, Jane too headed that way. It was her turn to jump. The air was warm but the water was cold, she knew, from wading earlier. She wanted to jump but she feared the cold. She had some hope, but it had a cousin called fear. She longed to proceed as others had but she feared the pain, the jolt, the cold of the water. So, she paused, she pondered, she hesitated, she equivocated, she moved left and right. Then she asked to take a moment to go down into the water, wading, to get her feet wet, and to get herself wet before the jump. Up she came, but still, she stood still. ‘Jump, Jane’ called her cousins. So since that light moistening didn’t work she asked to go down into the water to submerge in full, and be all wet before the jump. Surely that would do the trick. But that didn’t work either. Finally, she negotiated an end to the hostilities by deciding to wait until the next day. She went up the hill dry and warm, but unsuccessful and downcast, her fear mollified but her hope deferred. She had it right, though, both ways, didn’t she? Yes, it would feel good to jump and yes, it would not feel good to jump. Both. At the same time. The sheer, public full honesty of the dilemma, the horns of the dilemma, is something we adults somehow learn or manage to disguise. One is always better than the other, when it comes to choices, we suppose. Right? Is that right? Well, not really. Yes, it feels good to jump, but yes it feels bad to jump. Both. At the same time. And there was evening, and there was morning, another day. And the next day, a whole day older and wiser, she took her usual place, fourth among six, and sauntered to the end of the dock, counted to the ritual three, uno dos tres, and, without a moment’s hesitation, she jumped. She came up smiling. Now less fear, now more hope. Choices in real time, choices in our experience, choices in freedom, for young and old, are strange things, dialectical and multi-dimensional. We want what we fear and we fear what we want. We hope for what we do not see, and we do not see the way toward that for which we hope. And, sometimes, the air feels better, and sometimes the water. The meaning in life and the meaning of life is in the living of life. Choose. Choose! And then choose again. But as you begin, begin with the hope in mind. There is fear, but there is hope.

For the Gospel of Mark, it is ever a question, put to us again today, whether we can learn to see through Jesus’ eyes, to begin with the hope in mind. To be honest about our fears, for sure, and, in due course, to give them their due. But when your child is ill, as was the child of the Syro-Phoenician woman, to begin with hope in mind. But when your body needs healing, as did that of the Gentile without hearing, to begin with hope in mind. Hope is the spiritual air we need to breathe. It is not so much that where there is life there is hope, but more that where there is hope there is life.

We are savingly accosted today by the healing that hope brings. Jesus in his earthly ministry preached, and taught, and healed. Our Gospel of Mark, read this morning and throughout this year, spares no expense or effort to make sure we recognize the power for healing in His hopeful Presence. In fact, today, we have two healing stories conflated and combined, to double the punch. The first story, if ever there was to be one story truly accurate about Jesus’ earthly life, carries us to Jesus’ worn tunic side, to Jesus’ young man’s body, to Jesus’ somehow power to heal, to Jesus’ willingness to be corrected, to stand corrected. Mark and the early church had every reason to forget such embarrassment, the Lord of life brought to terms by a poor woman, a fearful and fretful mother who would do anything for her daughter, a GENTILE woman, an outsider, not truly religious, who challenges him. Yes, Lord. Yet even…There is no mistaking the intention here to evoke and invoke the preaching of the church, on its own mistaken about the universality, the breadth, the magnanimity of the mighty God and his God begotten Son. But with the Risen Christ, radiant in these apocalyptic passages, these errors become real possible pathways to full healing, to a child brought back from the brink, to the chance for the hearing of a word fitly spoken, and the chance for utterance of a word fitly spoken. An old story this, it carries a woman’s harsh rebuke of Him the church and Mark’s Roman community proclaim Risen Savior, Son of God, Lord and Christ.

Both stories are shot through with magical, exorcistic language, so much so that Matthew in retelling the Gospel on the basis of Mark, two decades or so later, eliminated them. The language can cause us to miss the meaning of the stories: they are meant to be understood symbolically, metaphorically. The hope that Jesus brings, announces our Gospel, can be spoken and heard by those not originally religious, those not within the accustomed heritage of faith—the Gentiles. Why Jesus even loses the one argument he loses in his whole ministry, here, to a Gentile, a Syro-Phoenician woman, a wily, crafty, Gentile woman. The hope that Jesus brings can be spoken and heard by those not naturally inclined to such speech and hearing, those not gifted say with a religious gene or a spiritual gene. For some music comes easily, for others not so. For some faith comes easy, for others not so. It is in the nature of things, this difference. Yet the hope in the healing that Jesus brings, here, overcomes both cultural and the natural barriers. Jesus is still working miracles of speaking and hearing, of ‘loosening tied up tongues’ (J. Marcus, Anchor Bible, I, 480).

Salvation is a Latin rooted word, stemming from salvus, which means health. The hope of salvation is the hope of healing. Where there is healing, there is the Risen Christ, as if He were to say, I am the hospital, I am the diagnosis, I am the medicine, no comes to healing but by me, and wherever healing happens there I am also.

Every day this fall, begin with hope in mind. Every week this fall, on the Lord’s day, come to church, and begin with hope in mind. At every turn, with every challenge, in every season, begin with hope in mind.

You heard the hope of healing again in Senator McCain’s memorial last weekend. Yes in the trumpets and traditional American music of the Navy Hymn, and in Boston’s My Country ‘Tis of Thee, and the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and the nature hymn, How Great Thou Art. Yes in the wise voices of Presidents and Senators and family and friends. Yes in the Gospel of John, with attendant, lesser Scriptures. Yes in the organ, the gothic nave, the robed choirs, the solemn liturgy. Yes, yes. But primordially you heard the hope of healing in Gerard Manley Hopkins’s two verse poem, with which the sermon that morning began:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves — goes itself; myselfit speaks and spells,

Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;

Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —

Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.

…for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his…

Many of us had left campus last spring before the full ‘beginning’, the full celebration of ‘commencement’. Those days offered great hope in beginnings. Our Commencement at Boston University in 2018 was a new beginning that began with hope.

We heard hope in the voice of the Deans in conference who spoke about ‘What constitutes ideal student life?’ Here are some of the words used. See if they sound to you like they sound to me: meaning, belonging, joy, happiness, in the world for the world, being known, friendship, community, care, pastoral care, health, tradition, gatherings, shared big experience, lessened anxiety, mental health, candle lighting. That all sounds to me like religion. All require a leap of faith. Jump, Jane! You cannot get within earshot of meaning, belonging, joy, happiness, in the world for the world, being known, friendship, community, care, pastoral care, health, tradition, gatherings, shared big experience, lessened anxiety, mental health, candle lighting,apart from religion.

We heard hope in the voice of those honored by induction into the Scarlet Key. This has been donefor 105 years.

We heard hope in the honored faculty member in the School of Dentistry. He remembered his own graduation and having six family members stay with him in his one bedroom apartment. Then he said to the graduates: work for the cause not the applause work for the cause not the applause.

We heard hope in the voice of Professor Nancy Ammerman preaching from this pulpit during the STH hooding ceremony. She fully acknowledged the difficulties in ministry and in life which bedevil our time, indeed which shadow and make anxious every day. Then she quietly and strongly spoke the gospel and spoke about the gospel. The Gospel is leaven, light and salt. The Gospel is leaven, light and salt. And her sermon was leaven, light and salt.

We heard hope in the voice of the the tenor soloist at the Boston Pops singing from Leonard Bernstein’s magnificent West Side Story: Maria…Do what you love and love what you do!

We heard hope in the voice of Carmen Yulinda Cruz Soto, mayor of San Juan, who simply asked what you will do when you are faced, as she and her people were last year, with choices of life and death. How will face that? Then she broke down briefly and beautifully in emotional remembrance of what her parents had sacrificed to send her to Boston University, including mortgaging their house twice.

We heard hope in the voice of John Lewis at the biggest of our gatherings, 20,000 of us at Nickerson Field, after Lewis had worshipped here at Marsh Chapel. He told about his first correspondence with and first conversation with Martin Luther King more than fifty years ago. Then he challenged the 20,000 present at Nickerson Field. So, good for you, you have a degree. And then what? You will get a good job. And then what? You buy a new car. And then what? You will build a new house. And then what? You will advance in your career. And then what? You will make money. And then what? What lasting meaning will your life and work have had? What lasting meaning will your life and work have had?

We heard hope from Colonel Thomas M. Stewart at one of our smallest but most meaningful gatherings, the ROTC Commissioning, annually at Fanueil Hall, but this year at City Hall: Speaking of Ego, Royalty left the Army when the British left Boston. You put your mission first. You focus on your people always. You be adaptable. You practice life-long learning. Then their parents stood beside them, placing upon their shoulders the apullets, the shoulder boards, marking them for service and sacrifice as they promised to Support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign or domestic. Did you hear the wording? The Constitution…all enemies… foreign or domestic.

We heard hope in the voice of Cardinal Sean O’Malley, in the reception of our Madeiros Scholars, telling these 20 full scholarship recipients that because you have been given a great gift, you have a responsibility in the future, in some significant way, to give back.

Today we begin with the hope in mind, a sermon offered as a word of faith in a pastoral voice toward a common hope. May our global listenership, including this year Kasey Shultz in Madagascar, continue to expand. May our undergraduate student members, like those present and participating today, continue to increase. May our worship service be distributed broadly to NPR stations coast to coast, so that those in Idaho and Texas can hear the service live on his home NPR station. May the interpretation of the Scriptures here, and elsewhere, continue to try to bring a biblical, prophetic critique, to bear upon national and cultural leadership under such manifold cloud cover today. May we try to strengthen the vital habits of assembly and representative democracy, these crucial though underattended, time and labor intensive communal gatherings, in Faculty Assembly, in Annual Conference, in Congress, and in Life. May our pastoral care ministry, embodied in chaplains and in many Lay Leaders, be matched by similarly vigorous ministries of outreach and of evangelism.

This may not be the morning for you to take a leap of faith. The timing may not be right. The air may be warmer than the water, and the water may still be cold. The right balance of hope and fear may not yet have arrived. No worries. There is tomorrow, and there is next week, and there is another day. Yesterday was ‘Splash’, the celebration of student life and groups, inviting a leap of faith. Friday night, said John Kerry, in reference to his recent writing about faith: ‘you know, it takes a leap; faith, it always takes a leap’.

Or, on the other hand, the time may be right and the air and water temperature fit, for just that leap of faith.

Begin with the hope in mind. For there is a healing that hope brings. Begin with hope in mind. For there is a healing that hope brings.

- The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel

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Sunday
September 2

Communion Meditation

By Marsh Chapel

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James 1:22-27

Mark 7:1-8

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As you enter this year of study, every day you will have a chance and a need for some pause, some moments of quiet. Use your familiar devotional reminders to bring peace of mind and encouragement of heart. Recite the decalogue. Recall the creed. Repeat the beatitudes. Rely on the Lord’s Prayer. Remember Paul’s admonitions. One of our student choristers brings you our sincere, communal and heartfelt word of welcome. Maggie?

Welcome

Maggie: Welcome to the varied ministry of Marsh Chapel at Boston University, fall 2018! We look forward to getting to know you, as you sign up to sing in a choir, as you volunteer to usher or greet, as you attend a fellowship or study group, and especially as you worship with us on Sunday at 11am!

The envisioned mission of Marsh Chapel is to be ‘a heart in the heart of the city, and a service in the service of the city’. To that end Dr. Jarrett will invite you to vocal expressions of faith in the life of our music program. To that end Ms. Chicka will invite you to global outreach in our work with International students. To that end Br. Whitney will invite you to take part and take leadership in campus student ministry. To that end Mr. Bouchard will solicit your support for work and works in hospitality.

This year, with our emphasis on ‘voice, vocation, and volume’ in our shared life, we are using as a focus for our work the word ‘hope’. Our summer, fall and spring term worship and community life are laden with expressions of hope. We trust and hope that each and every Sunday Morning will become an occasion for the speaking and hearing of ‘a word of faith in a pastoral voice toward a common hope’.

Where we can be personally helpful to you, and where our staff, chaplains, and campus ministers can be a benefit and blessing to you, do not hesitate to call up on us.

John Wesley famously called for a means of grace to ‘spread scriptural holiness and reform the nation’. Now that was a big dream! May grace expand and extend in meaning for us in the fall term, 2018!

To begin, as you enter, as you ‘matriculate’, today and this week, we offer you, in communion meditation, three thoughts on adventure, regret, and faith.

Adventure

We will keep ourselves in good balance by a daily quiet, a regular silence. In this time we may recall and recite the ten commandments, the apostles’ creed, the Lord’s prayer, and the beatitudes.

In so doing, we may be able to remember, to recollect, to regather ourselves by reference to our best selves, to our own-most selves. We have, for instance, had three years of shouting about a wall to be built along the Rio Grande. But even once, or at all, have you heard a reference in all this hollering to the Monroe Doctrine? The Monroe Doctrine expressed a singular, particular interest, on the part of the United States, in the whole of the Western Hemisphere. It privileged, rather than denigrated, our relationship with the peoples and lands from Canada to Mexico to Chile. Have you heard it quoted, or referenced in the last two years?

We happily have a rising senior, who is a student leader at Marsh Chapel, and an international studies major, who can help us remember the Monroe Doctrine. Denise, what can you tell us?

Denise: The Monroe Doctrine, authored by James Monroe in 1823, is in the main a statement of American commitment to the welfare and well-being of our northern and southern neighbors, Canada to Chile. It has waned and waxed in actual influence, and at times has been tragically abused. Theodore Roosevelt added his own corollary about 100 years after the original. The Monroe Doctrine expresses American commitment to protection and defense of our neighbors in this hemisphere.

Who knows? Perhaps some part of our matriculating class of 2022 will engage in the adventure of rebuilding culture, society, economy and politics in our international neighborhood. Listen again to the love poetry in the Song of Songs. The voice of my beloved! Behold he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. Voice…Beloved…Leaping…Bounding! Life is just full of potential, of possibility!! Life is an unending set of adventures!! Why we could as a country, for instance, rebuild the Central American societies and economies that are sending parents and children fleeing for their lives north to America. We have the means. We have the motivation. Bridges are better than walls. In safety and with jobs, people could stay in their own countries. What an adventure that would be, to see the Monroe Doctrine refit for the 21^st century! You might want to venture in adventure to study abroad, even perhaps south of the border.

Regret

We will keep ourselves in good balance by a daily quiet, a regular silence. In this time we may recall and recite the ten commandments, the apostles’ creed, the Lord’s prayer, and the beatitudes. In so doing, we may be able to sharpen our capacity to the tell the difference between the true and the false, between the decent and the scurrilous.

You probably remember the phrase, ‘Methinks the lady protesteth too much’. In hindsight we gain insight though often the insight is painful. Where is this remembered phrase found? In Shakespeare. It expresses doubt in another’s sincerity (for those older than I), or authenticity (for those of my own generation), or capacity for irony (for those coming into the student ranks today).

We happily have a rising junior, who is a student leader at Marsh Chapel, and an English major, who can help us remember Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, from near the year 1600. Tom, what can you tell us?

Tom: Well, actually, Dean Hill, the quotation, though often put as you did, is more accurately, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks". The line so spoken is a little subtler and has an irony to it. Here Queen Gertrude remarks on the insincerity, the overstatement within the ‘play within the play’ that Prince Hamlet writes. The play itself shows guilt and insincerity, as does the famous line about ‘protesting too much’. We use it in everyday speech to say that someone is lying.

By the way, if you have to choose, along the way, what in college to read, read some Shakespeare and read some Scripture. The Bible and the Bard are the best, in the long run. Both know about regret, a short or one word definition of hell. Hell is regret, and regret is hell. Hardly anyone escapes this life with no regrets. They befall us all. But we can at least be aware of them. We can least strive to minimize them, both in quantity and in quality, both in number and size. These years, if it be possible, we pray, let your regrets be few, so that your fulsome sense of irony and authenticity and sincerity will shine through. The thing about social media, the newer technological forms, is that it is possible to represent yourself as someone a bit other than yourself. For a time. But over time, the truth, the hard truth, comes out. When you look others in the eye and speak. And they look in you in the eye and listen. That is when you don’t want to have to ‘protest too much’. As the Bard also wrote, trite but still true, ‘to thine own self be true’. At least as much as possible! When I lie, I hurt most myself. Regret, the recognition of a lived moment of lying, hurts not others, but me. Eschew regret. Limit regret. May your regrets be few and far between.

My esteemed friend Professor Andrew Bacevich, speaking to the graduating class of our own BU Academy some years ago, said: ‘Now you are going off to college. You will sometimes find yourself in a situation where a little soulful radar sounds inside you. You know that something is afoot that just might not be right. Listen to the beeping, the conscience, the sound of that soulful radar’. The hardened and stern lessons of the Letter of James stand in this tradition: ‘be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves’. It is not just what you learn or hear, it is what you do or don’t do that makes a life, a college career, and a person.

Faith

We will keep ourselves in good balance by a daily quiet, a regular silence. In this time we may recall and recite the ten commandments, the apostles’ creed, the Lord’s prayer, and the beatitudes.

We are living through a national debate about whether honor is necessary to leadership, or not. Here in Mark 7 honor comes in two varieties, the one of the lips and the other of the heart. Said one this week, speaking of his work place, ‘What is missing there is heart’.

May your adventures be many, and may your regrets be few. The power to see things through, both when you need the accelerator and when you need the brakes, the capacity to balance the two, goes by the name of faith. As the Gospel today emphasizes, it is the inside of the cup, the heart, the sense of honor, over time, that matters most. Faith is the courage to continue to lean forward, when adventure is in the balance, and the courage to continue to lean backward, when regret is in the outcome. Whatever, says Paul, is not of faith, that is sin. So we gather for prayer every Sunday, and are led by lay leaders like Sandra, who often prays with and for us, as she does this morning. Sandra?

Sandra: Gracious God Holy and Just

Thou from whom we come and unto whom our spirits return

Thou our dwelling place in all generations

Rest upon us in the silence of this moment we pray

Dry the tears of those moved to emotion in an hour of separation

Illumine the skyline of opportunity that lies behind the rain clouds of worry

Carry young hearts open to friendship into seas of friendship

Help us hear for our time the voice of the Prophet

‘What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly’?

Help us we earnestly pray to prefer justice to judgment

Help us we earnestly pray to love the merciful more than the material

Help us we earnestly pray to walk humbly not haughtily

May the degrees we earn turn by degrees the wheel of life from judgment to justice

May the courses we choose inspire in choices later a keenness of mind matched by a fullness of heart

May the learning we gain afford us the gain of humility, the honest desire to give credit where credit is due, and not to tip the scale

May the friendships we make in their turn make us less inclined to judgment and more enamored of justice

May the regrets we acquire then incline us to mercy, as we have felt mercy, and not to material measurements alone

May the adventures we bravely pursue give us the wisdom to know our condition, mortal, frail, prone to harm others, frail, mortal

May all our acquisition of knowledge chase us toward justice, toward mercy, and toward humility

And the wisdom to welcome, later, perhaps much later, the recognition that

The larger the body of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of mystery that surrounds it

Amen

- The Reverend Doctor, Robert Allan Hill, Dean.

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Sunday
August 19

The Color Purple

By Marsh Chapel

Click here to listen to the full service

1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14

Ephesians 5:15-20

John 6:51-58

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(The form of today’s sermon is borrowed from the work of CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, although today’s preacher does not share Lewis’s fuller theology, nor does he believe in a literal devil or devils.)

My Dear Wormwood,

Again it is my pleasure to write your annual review, you devil you. No uncle was ever prouder of a nephew than I am of you, Wormwood, given the excellent, successful year you have had making devilry among the good people of planet earth. As chief representative of the fallen angels in this part of the universe, I have a close relationship with the Prince of Darkness Himself, our Father below. You may rest assured that news of your various nefarious victories will sink to his hellish level.

In particular, your work in the United States of America, Wormwood, has been nothing short of masterful. I take my horns off to you, one devil to another, and salute your destructivity. You have kept them fighting among themselves, morning to night, like children in a marketplace, solely sighting their own interests, assured that the one truth they each hold is the only truth, the only crayon in the box. Excellent, Wormwood, excellent. I could not have done better myself, even when I wore a younger devil’s tail. Keep at it, nephew, keep at it, set them one against the other, a man against his own house, a house divided, rich against poor, red against blue, radical against fundamentalist, communist against tea partier, personal ethics against social justice, doing against being. Oh the thrill we have to observe such needless hurt! Good boy. With this letter I enclose your official promotion, commendation, and ribbon as demon of the year, with special commendation for inciting divisive discord, in particular in the ‘lower forty eight’. Wormwood—you devil you!

Now, Wormwood, it would not do for me, your affectionate Uncle, Screwtape, Superintendent of demons in the near Milky Way, to let you go without a little avuncular advice. Call it a little devilish Dutch uncle advice, to keep you on your way. Down below they are considering this year, this fall in major proportion, the great hope of a land of the free, and a home of the brave, a community with liberty and justice for all, a place where those who have much might not have too much, and those who have little might not have too little. Ouch! It cools the fires of hell to hear such loving rhetoric. Here are some bits of wisdom, Wormwood my dear nephew, from your affectionate uncle, Screwtape.

Be most careful, Wormwood, not to let any of these groups you have so carefully set upon each other, with daggers drawn, get Solomon’s idea that wisdom comes from the humility of service, that wisdom is justified by deeds, that wisdom is justified by all her children, that wisdom comes in more than one color. Make sure the blue stay blue, and the red stay red. Flee the color purple, Wormwood, with its recognition of dialectical thought, its movement toward full truth, its bow before the sin all share, its willingness to learn the painful lesson of humility within a time of humiliation. Keep them fighting. Keep the Presbyterians denouncing pride, and forgetting about sloth and falsehood. Keep the Methodists denouncing sloth, and forgetting about pride and falsehood. Keep the Lutherans denouncing falsehood, and forgetting about pride and sloth. Yes. Excellent. Purple is dangerous to us, Wormwood. If the blue start seeing that the red have a point, here and there, or at least that real change is real hard and takes real work in real time including actually showing up at the polls on voting day—your cause is lost. Keep them shouting at each other, like children in a marketplace, one group wanting to play weddings and another wanting to play funerals, pipes vs. wails, dances vs. weepings. Take the purple out of their crayon boxes. You want gated communities, the demise of public schools, lines of suburban\urban separation, racial disease and distrust, class separations, ideological fences, and a verbal war of all against all. Tweet by tweet by tweet. Children in the marketplace, as their Savior, said, yes, Wormwood, well done.

And keep them discouraged in defeat. When they lose make sure they lose hope too. I am worried about far sighted, eloquent, hopeful leaders, like that Mario Cuomo a generation ago. Remember when he got defeated? But on the night of his defeat, remember what he said: “I come from a religion where the whole symbol of the religion ended in condemnation and crucifixion. But that wasn’t the measure of the experience…That’s just the way it ended…This is a metaphor for everybody’s life, that it is in the living…that you make your mark. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose”. The meaning of life is in the living of life (E Fromm).

Here is an example. I hear the good heart, the Solomonic heart and mind, of some of their leaders saying something about children, about the need for education and health care for all children and young adults, across the land, through age 21. Wormwood, this is peril for us! Be on the qui vive! If that country ever got behind that idea, and every child had medical care, education, respect—oh, it worries me. Why, the natural aristocracy as Ortega called it, would come to the surface. Keep them pinned down, keep their leaders pinned down, Wormwood, in tragic conflict, in financial red ink, in culture wars. And be vigilant! Sometimes they get the idea! You remember, many years ago, how that 11 year old Boy Scout, Brennan Hawkins, was lost for a month in the Utah mountains, and 3000 searchers looked for four days until they found him! The lost was found. Oh, the joy they had in it, too. It is like the joy a Christian has at bringing a friend, relative, neighbor to church to experience love and faith. There is no greater joy! It makes my devil’s blood freeze. The rescuer said, “I feel relieved and happy.” Oh Lordy. See, if they really meant it, if they really chose to live with hope against hope, hoping for what they do not see, and waiting for it with patience, we would be out of business in your part of the hemisphere. And business has been so good, of late!

Another example, Wormwood. We head devils hate to hear about people moving from poverty to well-being. We want a permanent underclass, so that we can then use it to foment division. We want a few of the people to have almost all the money. Excellent. But this country and its churches, especially the Methodists, have always championed social mobility, like that in the churches of Paul, way back when. His urban Christians were ‘status inconsistent’, and so are the living churches today. They are vibrant, they are diverse. Take that Chapel down in Boston there, not far from you, Wormwood, you devil you. Marsh Chapel. They are of many colors and hues and shapes and backgrounds. They resemble the globe on a Sunday. They know—AND THEY LIVE—the universal gospel of the living bread, come down from heaven, with whom to be in communion is eternal life. Oooh, that bothers me Wormwood, to hear such preaching, that ongoing incessant acclamation of a word of faith in pastoral voice toward a common hope. It is irritating! It really frosts my preserves. See what you can do to keep people from listening on the radio, or, worse, horror of horrors, showing up in worship. Those Marsh Chapel people are like that Paul of Tarsus, a thorn in MY flesh, that Apostle to the Gentiles, but we got him at last, remember? We need to keep people in their place. I tell you, nephew, it bothers me when I read about a young woman, Della Mae Justice, who was a 15 year old foster child living in a hut with a dirt floor, until her uncle came and found her and took her into his own home. He was an attorney in Kentucky. She said it was like little Orphan Annie going to live with the Rockefellers. Listen to this Wormwood, listen to what she said, and see if doesn’t freeze your blood:

“It was not easy. I was shy and socially inept. For the first time, I could have had the right clothes, but I didn’t have any idea what the right clothes were. I didn’t know much about the world, and I was always afraid of making the wrong move. When we had a school trip for chorus we went to a restaurant. I ordered a club sandwich, but when it came with those toothpicks on either end, I didn’t know how to eat it, so I just sat there, well, staring at it and starving and saying I didn’t feel well.”

Her uncle educated her at Berea College, a school set up especially for hard working, children of the poor who want a fine education. Now she is an attorney in his firm. Wormwood! Be on the lookout! This kind of story will find its way into somebody’s pulpit, into to some sermon some Sunday, if it is not snuffed out. See who have on our side in the newspapers, and work on it.

Or, look at this matter of the ‘Queen of Soul’. When one young woman grows up in the church, her dad a preacher, and then she starts singing, and she has a voice from, you know, up there--heaven…pretty soon all those divisions we worked so hard to set up start melting: gospel against rock, jazz against R and B, spirituality against sensuality, and pretty soon have the ‘Queen of Soul’ whose music is universally loved. I mean it Wormwood, purple can be a sound as well as a color as well as a voice as well as a word. Keep them all divided up if you can, and get that purple crayon out of their national, their existential crayon box. Purple means good hope for a good future. Get rid of it nephew, Wormwood, you devil you.

Confusion, miscommunication, mistrust—these are your best allies, my shrewd nephew. And there, I must compliment you: you have done so much to them through technology and they have hardly caught up 10%; they have hardly any idea! But be careful. Over time they could catch on. They must not be allowed to remember the lessons of the past. Like that Solomon and his wise, measured understanding. Or that author of Ephesians talking about personal, communal balance and discipline, that ‘keep calm carry on’ malarky. Or, especially, that Fourth Gospel, ever announcing the hope of the presence of the divine. The last thing on earth our Fearless Leader, the Prince of Darkness, wants is a hope of planetary peace. Then people would be free, purple crayon in hand, to draw a picture of a nation and a world that can work, measured by the condition of the least, the last, and the lost.

Let me be blunt, Wormwood. When you see a red woman and a blue man determined to think together, learn from each other, and work side by side, and they have lunch at a table adorned in purple, close that restaurant. We just cannot have that kind of synthesis going on. Thesis, yes. Antithesis, yes. But no Synthesis. Red we can stand, blue we can handle. It is the color purple that is our downfall. We cannot afford that kind of creativity, new creation, new thinking. We can’t have Bob Gates defending John Brennan, on the basis of what is true, right, hopeful and just. That Gates, that Texas Methodist, always out there doing good for others, now in business, here at a college, there in the defense department--with the red and then the blue, then fixing the Boy Scouts mistake about gays, then, here he is again, supporting John Brennan over against emerging authoritarianism. Purple, Gates is purple to the core. Beware that kind of person, Wormwood. That is purple and that is our peril, Wormwood, you devil you.

Let me be blunter, Wormwood. When you see a church, one of the last places people actually gather if they gather at all, that is both red and blue, and putting on a robe with a purple hue, weaken that church. A denomination that stands for children, for the poor, for social mobility, for justice, for Biblical, dialectical thought, not just the thunderbolts from far left and right--drain that swamp. What you have done to the Methodists in the Northeast, eliminating half their membership in a generation, you need to do across the country. Get them so worked up with each other that they just can’t work together. Have them so entirely invested in resistance that they have no energy, or imagination, or voice, for restoration. Restoration, that is the purple hope, the purple trouble, the purple hue. Make them angry, not hopeful. Keep them angry, not hopeful.

I have one specific request, dear nephew. Keep your eye on that chapel in Boston. You know, the one on Commonwealth Avenue. They are growing. They are building. They are liberal and yet they are blue and red together. They love children. They are learning to tithe. They are starting to invite. Work on them, Wormwood. Make them fear the unknown. Make them tentative. Make them forget their outreach to students, their welcome to faculty, their mission work and children’s programs. Make them accentuate divisions, all divisions, gender, race, ethnicity, orientation, class –sweet divisions, sweet divisions. Make them disagree wherever they can. I will check your work at our Halloween review. Halloween—what a fitting, a good time for us to be together, Wormwood.

I send you best wishes for all that is predatory and mendacious, nephew. Remember my theme song, your Uncle Screwtape’s favorite, stolen from Blake, our shared theme song: When Satan first the black bow bent, and the moral law from the gospel rent, he turned the law into a sword and spilt the blood of mercy’s Lord.

And put your horns, pitch fork and tail into it, Wormwood, you devil you. Hold back that Solmonic wisdom: I am only a little child, and I do not know how to come out or go in. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to discern between good and evil. Hold back that teaching from Ephesians: Be careful how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil…sing songs and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves. Hold back that Gospel promise in John: I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever… Whoever eats of this bread will live forever… Whoever eats of this bread will live forever…

- The Reverend Doctor, Robert Allan Hill, Dean.

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 08.19.2018 at 11:00 am
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Sunday
July 29

The Least of These

By Marsh Chapel

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Ephesians 3:14-21

John 6:1-21

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Our Gospel this morning, sung in hymns, including children’s hymns, read in Holy Scripture, including the Fourth Gospel, approached in thought and speech, including in a twenty minute sermon, and, in full, lived out in the exuberance of a summer Sunday, accents the glory and revelation in the least among us, the littlest among us. The Gospel of John exalts the glory of God revealed in the divine presence, throughout and through all of life. Our passage from John 6 is one of seven great miraculous accounts recalled in the preaching of the earlier church, and collected in the first half of the Gospel of John, as a way to ring the bell, and sing the song, and tell the tale of the divine presence. It is miraculous that 5,000 have gathered. It is miraculous that all are fed in one setting. It is miraculous, more miraculous still, that not only are they fed, but they are satisfied. That is a glorious morning, when all are satisfied. It is miraculous that in this revelation, there arises, for the author of John in reflection, a sense of what this must mean, that one from beyond has entered within, that one from above has descended below, that ‘a prophet’—such a strange appellation—has come into the world. To be sure, John has received this story from tradition (as in Mark 6), but he has changed it to celebrate a glorious revelation, which takes him well beyond any simply sacramental concern. And of all John’s changes, perhaps, the greatest is the agency he gives to one of the least of those present. In John, unlike in Mark and the other gospels, there is a new figure in the story, a boy, a lad, a little fellow, who is the only one who remembered to bring a lunch along. There was, John avers, a lad with 5 barley loaves and two fish. John smuggles into the morning’s Gospel a new character in the ongoing story of Gospel, of divine presence. In radiant exuberance, the revelatory joy of Jesus’ presence, then and now, on the hills of Palestine and in the hills of New England, John alerts us to this one little lad, the boy with the lunch to share. This is good news packaged in the lunch pail of the least of these among us.

On the streets of Boston in the summer, we too are alert to the least of these among us. Summer takes our city and makes it young, younger still, young again. This is a time when people from all over the globe come and pay us a call, come and visit us here. Just look at the license plates of the cars driving past you some time on the highways north, south and west. Just listen to the languages spoken as you saunter down a summer day in this magical city, as you ‘flaneur dans le rue’. It is an unutterable happiness to be graced with those who want to visit, who come from afar, who save and plan and travel to get here to see something, to learn something, to touch the hem of something.

For this is dear old Boston, the home of the bean and the cod, where the Lowells will speak only to the Cabots, and the Cabots speak only to God. Boston, in so many ways the city of origin, the point of departure. Boston, birthplace of the republic: Haymarket Square, Old North Church, Bunker Hill, Old Ironsides.

Boston, home to heroes: Paul Revere, Abigail Adams, John Hancock. Boston, where in 1832 the city heard a children's choir sing, "My Country tis of thee", written a year earlier, and sung first at Park Street Church, just a few blocks from here. This afternoon, on the Freedom Trail you can talk with "Ben Franklin" attired in the garb of 1780. On the subway you can stop at the Scollay Square station and remember the man who never returned. Take the train to Fenway park and peer at the green monster. Try not to make the mistake of wearing a Yankees hat. Walk through downtown and the flower gardens in the glorious Public Garden. Spend a minute along the old streets, and feel the freshness of a country being born, being formed, being built. Visit the children's science museum. Boston your home town takes the world and makes it young again!

One of the best spots in this young city, this birthing room for freedom, is the Aquarium. Right on the port shoreline your city has built a magnificent structure, a several tiered tank. Coral has been transported from the Caribbean, and then also reproduced. Fish of dozens of colors, shapes, sizes swim in the blue green cylinder. Divers in fins, wetsuits and air tanks maintain the giant manmade ocean tank. Stingrays swimming in a separate pool--you could touch them! And around and around the outside of the cylinder walk mesmerized children and adults, looking on the splendor of the Neptune's kingdom. There are six kinds of sharks in the Aquarium. The sand shark and others. At the top level you can watch them jump and swim. Boston returns one to the great ocean deep from which life at last emerged across the millennia. Boston takes the world and makes it young again!

A generation ago, with three children in tow, in the summer heat and on a limited budget, it is a happy glory to recall, our then young family visited the Aquarium. The place was mobbed, packed with kids and parents, classes and groups. The colors and shapes and sizes of the humans walking clockwise around the tank mimicked nicely the variety of fish swimming counterclockwise inside. We saw a little girl pressing her nose against the glass up toward the tank top, just as the sand shark swam by. Two women photographed the coral. A boy screamed as he patted the stingray. There were maybe 3000 people inside the Aquarium. All of a sudden, the loudspeaker crackled. "Please be quiet, all of you." Soon the tall structure, full of children and parents, was nearly silent. The announcer continued, "I must regrettably report that a little boy is lost. He is three years old. He is wearing jeans and a white sweatshirt that says Boston College on the front. He has red hair. Please take a minute wherever you are and look toward the tank and then along the walkway." In a moment, you could feel the atmosphere in the building shift from lark to worry. Every parent's worst nightmare had hit. The tension around the tank was palpable. The thought that one child, even one, out for a day of learning and play would disappear, or worse, held the gathered company on a tight leash.

In a single moment, the joy of the many had been overshadowed, darkly overshadowed by the need of just one. All knew instinctively that there are no extra children, none to spare, not one to give up, to throw to the sharks. In that kind of dramatic moment, it so very clear: every child is precious, every one dear.

We have wondered a little this summer, remembering our long ago visit, about the way the announcement so disturbed those of us who could see our own children. Of course you can think of many reasons. But one central reason the announcement "child lost…white sweat shirt.." pierced the group that day is that we are dimly aware that there is a kind of revelation in the least of these, like the lunch for the road of life brought along by the lad with the 5 barley loaves and 2 fish. Children have not had a chance in full at life yet. They have not had their time yet in the batter’s box. They give a sharp measure of how what we say stands up to what we do, of what our walk is like in earshot of all our talk. Children suffer the effects of poverty most strongly. Children endure the effects of family demise most squarely. Children miss the care of physicians and dentists most keenly. Children feel the impact of bad diet most sharply. Children are too little, too weak, too powerless, too small in every way to watch out for themselves. Children measure the depth of morality around us by measuring the amount of time, energy, commitment, and money within us, ready to be devoted to children.

As a country, just a few weeks ago, we had a shared, convulsive, similar moment, did we not? We know the need for laws, for borders, for the institutions that make up a civil society, including proper, legal, fair immigration practices. Across different perspectives, we can largely agree that law is central to safety and peace, that law is meant to make us more human and humane rather than less. And we also, by vast majority, know and affirm the centrality of immigration in the birth and life and health of our land. But law, like scripture, requires interpretation, and application, and therein lies challenge. So when as country, we faced the shame and humiliation, within this decade of humiliation, of seeing children taken from their parents, seeing parents deprived of their children, seeing what can befall the least among us, and especially those 2,000 directly affected, in our own time, at the borders of life, there was a common revulsion, a common reaction, a common response. Nota bene. There is in that one moment a sign, a sign of a common hope. Like the presence of the little lad who shared his lunch, across the lake from Capernaum, and so both took and gave the measure of that Gospel moment, so the least of these measure us.

As a church, let us readily confess as well, we have yet to achieve the kind of caring for children which we profess. The pious words of a recent Methodist Church statement (“Durham Declaration") are ones we all share: "We believe that caring and providing for one another includes welcoming children into the family of the Church. As members of the Body of Christ, we know that children are gifts from God. In this we follow the example of our Lord, who, during his earthly ministry and in the face of opposition, welcomed children to his side. And we conform to the example of the early church, which, though living in the midst of a pagan empire that casually practiced abortion and abandoned children (usually to slavery, prostitution or death), helped to provide refuge for unwanted ones and their needy parents." There was even a footnote to the Didache. Well, good. Good words. But anyone who has been around the church for very long knows that we do not endlessly, fully practice what we preach, in this as in so many areas. We sometimes devote more language to love of children in church than we do actual time spent with children. Vacation Bible School (we have run one every year since 1979, including a small one here June 24) is one bellwether for our commitment. Sunday School is a close second. We are still more than rightly judged by the sort of people we produce, the sort of children we raise, in the communities of faith.

One day this summer, after a round of golf, two friends stopped at the home of a third to have supper. The host is a retired physician, a family doctor from the bygone days of "fee for service". Redolent with exercise and at ease in the company of friends, the doctor reflected on his life and work. A summer evening, a twilight supper, a moment before the light begins to fade and the cool air returns--this became an hour for thoughts before the autumn twilight of life, a moment before a great change of season.

He spoke about service and care. He ruminated regarding "the young doctors coming up". He unabashedly celebrated great-grandchildren, grandchildren, and children (both adopted and biological). A large family portrait hung on the living room wall. Mostly, though, this veteran of decades of stewardship campaigns talked about his church. He reckoned: "I try to tithe because in the church children get what they cannot get anywhere else. They catch a sense of wonder--wonder at the world, wonder at love, wonder before holiness. They see real kindness--kind people, kind ideas, kind words, kind works. Most of all, they learn about generosity--generosity in church that makes a world of difference. In the church seeds are planted: seeds of wonder, kindness, and generosity. I am happy to hope that my tithing has made a difference."

It made me happy to hear him say so. It makes me happy, on this summer Sunday, to think of all the good women and men, near and far, who are offering themselves, offering yourselves, to, and with, and through the least of these. A student teaching church school. A woman running a child care center. A man hiking with scouts. A musician volunteering with a children’s choir. A graduate student preparing to work with, to counsel children. A couple who lead confirmation classes. The blessed ones who will volunteer to lead youth groups. Summer camp counselors, overworked and underpaid. And more broadly, the citizenry of this land, which still dimly perceives that the lad with the fish and loaves, the least of these among us, measures us.

Someone helped you grow up. Someone helped you discover discipline, hard work and a passion for education. Discipline to reflect the ordering power of God. Work to reflect the creative energy of God. Education to reflect the life-giving newness of God's spirit. Children, the least of these, are made "in the image and likeness of God."

People know that there are no extra children, none to spare, not even one to throw to the sharks. When the need is clearly presented, the problem is almost solved. So it was on a July day in dear old Boston, a generation ago, that after twenty minutes of looking and waiting, the tourists at the Boston Aquarium again heard the crackling loudspeaker, and again heard the announcer’s voice, and at last heard the report, the child is found, the lost is found. Several thousand people stared at one another and many fish and cheered instinctively, just as we will stand and cheer when every child across this great land and around the world over has what she needs to make a life.

One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?" Jesus said, "Make the people sit down." Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, "Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost." …When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world."

- The Reverend Doctor, Robert Allan Hill, Dean.

posted in The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel on 07.29.2018 at 11:00 am
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Hope that is Seen is not Hope

Begin With The Hope In Mind

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The Least of These

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